Operation Vistula, 1947

Operation Vistula (Polish: Akcja Wisła; Ukrainian: Опера́ція «Ві́сла») was the codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of close to 150,000 Ukrainians, Rusyns, Boykos, and Lemkos from the southeastern provinces of postwar Poland to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country. The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities to remove material support to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued its guerrilla activities until 1947 in Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution; Operation Vistula brought an end to the hostilities. In a period of three months beginning on 28 April 1947 and with Soviet approval and aid about 141,000 civilians residing around Bieszczady and Low Beskids were forcibly resettled to former German territories, ceded to Poland at the Yalta Conference at the end of World War II. The operation was named after the Vistula River, Wisła in Polish; some Polish and Ukrainian politicians as well as historians condemned the operation following the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe and described it as ethnic cleansing. Others argued that no other means of stopping the violence existed since partisans used to regroup outside Polish borders. At the same time the Soviet Union carried out a parallel action, Operation West, in the Ukrainian SSR. Although both operations were coordinated from Moscow, there was a difference in their results. Operation West was conducted in West Ukraine by the Soviet NKVD and targeted the families of suspected UPA members. Over 114,000 individuals, mostly women and children, were deported to the Kazakh SSR and Siberia and forced into extreme poverty. Of the 19,000 adult males deported by the NKVD, most were sent to coal mines and stone quarries in the north. None of those deported by the NKVD received any farms or empty homes to live in.